Al-Qaeda's Godfather Is Dead - Good Riddance

The ruthless U.S. imperialist Zbigniew Brzezinski died last night. Good riddance.

Brzezinski was the godfather of al-Qaeda and similar groups.

As National Security Advisor of U.S. President Jimmy Carter Brzezinski devised the strategy of using religiously motivated radical militants against secular governments and their people. He sent Saudi financed Wahhabi nuts to fight the government of Afghanistan before the USSR intended to send its military in support that government. His policy of rallying Jihadis (vid) caused millions of death. Brzezinski did not regret that:

What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Brzezinski hailed from a Polish nobility family in Galicia, now west Ukraine. (Galicia is, not by chance, also the place of origin of today's Ukrainian neo-nazis.) The family fled Poland after its German/Soviet partition and and the socialization of the vast nobility properties during and after the second world war. Zbigniew Brzezinski hate of anything socialist and Russian derived from that.

The 9/11 attacks, the war on Syria, the recent massacre in Manchester and the murder of 28 Copts yesterday in Egypt are direct consequences of Brzezinski's "some stirred-up Moslems" strategy of exporting revolutions. The growth of the fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabi creed, a danger to all mankind, was prepared and propagated by him.

May he burn in hell - soon to be joined by the other "total whore" and fellow war criminal Henry Kissinger,

Trouble is, it's not about an individual, it's about a system that relies on weapon sales and fleecing the populations to survive, i.e, the global swamp. For instance, how on earth can anybody with half a brain not know that Saudi Arabia is the matrix of Wahhabi-Salafi terror? When you see Trump ignoring such common knowledge to push his weapons sales (and surrealistically faulting Iran), you know that Wahhabi cutthroats will carry on being used by the CIA, you know that money dictates how these swamp creatures see the world, and you know that one Brzezinski less will not do anything to solve the problem.
It is a sick, psychopathic system. It's full of loonies like Brzezinski and unfit for humans. BTW, that individual was a really nasty piece of work, but what about those who listened to him when obviously, he belonged in a straitjacket?
So, beyond complaining, what do we do?

I long recall the Soviet embassy sending an official letter across town - Washington - to point out that one day the U S would bitterly regret having instigated religious fundamentalism as a weapon against Soviet secularism in central asia . Reading of this all those years ago I had a feeling of great foreboding .

As National Security Advisor of U.S. President Jimmy Carter Brzezinski devised the strategy of using religiously motivated radical militants against secular governments and their people.

He just expanded its use outside of the Middle East and made it far more visible and militant. It had already been used against the secular states in the Middle East such as Egypt under Nasser with the assistance of Saudi Arabia.

Well said , concise and to the point. I bought his book The Grand Chessboard just before the Ukraine coup and it as radical as his musings were, they did make much of the foreign policy of Clinton & Obama. A prime point in the book other than establishing control of Central Asia was to also prevent Russia, China and Iran from forming an anti American axis. Also mention of an EU without Germany or France being obsolete.

Is there any record of Jimmy Carter's retrospection on this Afghanistan business. He seems to signal virtue at every turn....I'd be interested if he had any regrets about letting this particular genie out of the bottle..

Just a bit of biographical correction. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not have formally hereditary aristocracy, so while Brzezinskis are a "noble family" with a Horns, this coat of arms is shared by 332 families, some very powerful, and some, like Brzezinski's family, without any estates. Grandfather of Brzezinski was a judge in Austrian empire and lived pretty much in the center of Galicia, now in Poland very close to the boundary with Ukraine. Father of Brzezinski was an officer during the wars with Galician Ukrainians (Western Ukrainian Republic) and Soviet Union in 1918-1922, and later had a successful bureaucratic carrier, becoming Polish consul in Montreal in 1937. There Zbigniew finish high school and studied at McGill University.

The link with pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists of western Ukraine is rather ambiguous. He surely knew about them, why, his father was an officer fighting with these guys, and later they formed a terrorist movement within Poland (that won the western Ukraine in 1918-22). Bandera made his name by organizing a slaying of a Polish interior minister. And later "all of them" were anti-Communist exiles in Canada.

One could credit Brzezinski in creating the policy of "humanitarian intervention". It de-emphasized and reduced the support for the retrograde dictators in Latin America and focused on the nipping of the "totalitarian menace" of the Soviet zone of influence. Supporting Islamic radicals in Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan etc. was the best tool at hand (South African regime slugging it out with Marxist movements in Portuguese Angola and Mozambique were not as good, plus, purely local in its capabilities). Back in 1970-ties it did not look bad, in the retrospect, it was the most successful lipstick brand launched in XX century (I live it as an open question who needs lipsticks in this context).

Trond 11
That was funny. I would like to see Team Bush buried under shithouses in Iraq too. At least one Iraqi got to throw a shoe.

As to Zbigboy, the chessboard was his manifesto on divide-and-conquer and playing groups of peoples against each other. It is also a mate of Kissinger (PNAC, etc) that no state or group should be allowed to rise to dominate or influence a region.

Correct. The USG has been backing gibbering Wahabi lunatics, easily the source of 90% of "Muslim" terrorism, against secular Arab governments since the Eisenhower Administration. This is a big reason those secular Arab governments became dictatorships, what with the local US Embassy constantly fomenting & instigating coups by GWL.

Am I the only one who finds it strange, that after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, that our government is allied with Al Qaeda in places like Syria? And that the public doesn't seem to care? One would have thought that a scandal! We are giving weapons and aid the the same organization that blew up the twin towers, and yet we obsess over the need to make people take their shoes off at airports and give up all their privacy in the name of fighting terrorism. We hold up Osama bin Laden as an icon of evil, and our government funds his successors, and nobody bats an eye.

Prescient, Scathing but a "Bull's Eye". Along with Kissinger & he are the real surrogates of "Deep State" evolution in USA. Nothing will stop them Now. Not even Trump. JFK, Nixon & Iran - Contra scam hobbled Reagan also.

One of Lobaczewski's long-gone collaborators postulated that any organization opposing a large, organizational pathocracy ('the west' vs. the Soviet state at the time) was itself subject to becoming a pathocracy.

The idea wasn't one of infection, but more of the almost automatic tendency of an organization to enable and empower its own psychopaths in an attempt to counter those of the other organization. Initially, it's fighting fire with fire. But when the 'enemy' ceases to exist or be a threat, you can't simply turn off your own state's psychopaths because they are most likely running the place.

States always morph into a psychopathic bully themselves in the process of opposing another psychopathic state. The harder they fight, the faster the transformation.

Burying Brzezinski and Kissinger does not end ANYTHING. They (and their ilk) leave behind a thoroughly and profoundly sick U.S. and western states loaded with new generations of psychopaths. In fact, getting rid of every last psychopath in ANY western government (parliament) fixes nothing because the organizations themselves ensure that new psychopaths will quickly bubble to the top.

Lobaczewski's group was not JUST trying to explain why otherwise normal 'little people' turned into psychopaths so readily in the (then) Soviet East. They were trying to understand why otherwise good nations turned into something sick and evil themselves in the process of 'saving' another nation from evil. Their magic cure was nothing more than awareness of the risk and basic prevention - wash your damn hands after leaving the bathroom.

We have rid ourselves of Brzezinski but have done nothing to recognize the disease, much less attempt any sort of remedy. We go back to our food preparation jobs after leaving the bathroom hoping evil spirits will not randomly make our customers sick.

Brzezinski's passing has all the significance of driving by a random light post on a cross-country trip.

I have no love for ZBig, but it is far from clear he is an "architect" of the American Deep State.
ZBig is exactly like the Libyan, Syrian, Afghan expats sheltered and fed by the US; they are just the latest of a rogue's gallery of foreigners who are useful to American foreign policy.
Need a critical assessment of a government? Here's a "senior former official"
Need contacts into opposition parties? Here's an "oppressed minority".
Communists, Nazis, Jews, Muslims, Caucasian, Asian, African - all are available.
Not to say ZBig had no influence, but there's a big difference between running in front of the pack and leading it.
Freeland and cohorts in Canada are clearly leading.
ZBig? Much less clear.

Brzezinski's passing has all the significance of driving by a random light post on a cross-country trip.

It is one of the main features of psychopathy to regard people as inanimate objects.
A healthy human mind is not capable seeing a person like some lamp post.
Also, the normal mind cannot really comprehend random. That is one of the reasons why casinos are so successful as a business.

Indeed, beginning in the second half of America's 20th century up until now, one can see Nietzsche's maxim about fighting monsters being played out and revealing the greatness of his thought. This has culminated in such a way that Lavrov even said that America media has become remniscent of the Soviet Pravda. No argument here.

Well I thought it would be obvious since I quoted it...
Anyways, I know you are actually jolly & happy that the old bastard is finally dead, you are just trying to suppress your schadenfreude because gosh it is so totally inappropriate for a sophisticated and rational intellectual to fell like that. :-P

It is one of the main features of psychopathy to regard people as inanimate objects.
Posted by: hopehely | May 27, 2017 12:24:55 PM | 23

I would be less optimistic about the "normal human psychology". it is not like with proper tests, therapy and pills we can get competent and compassionate politicians. Social mammals create complex hierarchies, and can kill members of other packs/groups of the same species. I read that in Melanesia, headhunting was actually allowing people to live with ecological balance, villages were spaced with enough forest in between allowing for sustainable shifting cultivation with healthy addition of the wild plants and game. Some people argue that compassion extended to people you do not know is unnatural. But so is the use of flushing toilets that are arguably beneficial in modern society.

What I want to say is that "pathology" is an inaccurate shortcut when you try to make the case that your opinion is more valid than the opinions in corporate media. Especially, as a non-conformist, you cannot convince the majority that they are "pathological". Instead, I would say that "humanitarian interventionism" is in part phony (it took very little time to get rid of Carterian humanitarian impulses from our foreign policy theory and practice, so it became a tawdry cosmetic line) and in the remaining part, thoroughly misguided. And, most damning, it relies on constant production of disinformation, crooked standards, etc.

In the same time, one has to be always careful. Trump seems to oppose humanitarian interventionism, but he seems open to purely inhuman interventions. Hum-Intv folks even stopped pretending that clobbering Yemen furthers the human wellbeing in any way, so Yemen war is like their ugly child, you still feed it but you do not show him to your friends, and the less you have to say about him, the better, but Trump simply beams with pride if it lets him sell enough overpriced crap.

Perhaps it worth noting that in Brzez's last year he basically retracted the thesis that he presented in The Great Chessboard. See this counterpunch article by Mike Whitney. Brzez was realistic enough to see that breaking up the China-Russia-Iran alliance was not going to work and maybe we should do deals with them. He seemed to realize that US policy to capture the central Asian republics in order to drive a wedge between those those three civilizations was hopeless. This does not atone for his crimes but does indicate that he had some grasp of reality. This last article was barely noted our MSM which seems to be still clamoring for the Great Chessboard strategy.

hopehely@28 - No. Read my post again. His passing is INSIGNIFICANT in the larger scheme of things. Nothing changes, nothing ends - the U.S. and the west haven't learned a thing. We remain in the diseased, psychopathic state that he (as well as many others) ushered in. Many more like him will follow. As always (at least in the U.S.) we will continue - with utter futility - to try to fix everything with our horribly debased voting process and the thoroughly-rigged, useless 'laws'. And we will continue to fail.

Brzezinski was a diseased, psychopathic human being that - through the mechanisms of the state - caused unimaginable pain and suffering throughout the world (directly or indirectly) because of his psychopathy. Not by himself, of course. The guy should have been contained and treated like the diseased person he was, not elevated to positions as a diplomat or counselor to national leaders. A healthy society should shun psychopaths, not bumble along oblivious to the harm they cause.

The organization of the state should be somewhat self-aware of the effects of diseased people like Brzezinski and protect and hopefully rid itself from that kind of influence. It can't (in the U.S., anyway) because 'the state' is diseased itself and that disease is perpetuated through psychopathic individuals inside that benefit from a diseased state. It's a self-reinforcing, symbiotic relationship. Brzezinski's disease was a part of that. Once again, his death changed nothing.

"...you are just trying to suppress your schadenfreude..."

As far as his death on a personal level - I simply didn't know the guy. I assume he had family and friends that will mourn his passing. Their pain makes me neither jolly nor happy. There is no schadenfreude - I feel sad for them regardless of my thoughts about Brzezinski.

"...because gosh it is so totally inappropriate for a sophisticated and rational intellectual to fell like that..."

Now you're accusing me of being 'a sophisticated and rational intellectual'? Well... there's certainly no reason to get nasty about it and call me names like that, you bastard!

@pw. 'In fact, getting rid of every last psychopath in ANY western government (parliament) fixes nothing because the organizations themselves ensure that new psychopaths will quickly bubble to the top.'

now you're talking. my only real quarrel with your 'psychopathic' analysis was its seeming identification of a cabal of evil, demented individuals as the seat of the problem. i think this is too 'interior' an analysis. we all have the potential to see ourselves as the driven agents we are most of the time, but its a full-time job, and by definition 'success' is a statistical measurement.

there is such a thing as society, regardless maggie thatcher's dictum, and individual humans are suspended within it ... and often as oblivious to that fact as the proverbial fish are to the water they swim and breathe in.

to master our societies requires our collective effort. unless and until we organize to do so we'll continue spinning in our psychopathic gyre(s). what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? but in union we might be strong.

i think it's the simple refusal to accept that our 'outside' contingencies are more than a match for our 'inside' ones that's holding us back. we're all stuck in an imaginary world that began with our individual births and will expire with our individual deaths. so the race is continually reborn in 'magnificent' isolation, now fractured into 7 and a half billion pieces.

something has to be done about this for us to continue and collectively, we're the only ones here to do it.

I think I agree with you, though I find the use of psychological & medicinal terminology in political contexts rather problematic - it usually doesn't enhance comprehension imo.

There's people with weird, dangerous or maybe 'psychopathic' leanings in every country and every society, they're part of humanity. But when they 'systematically' get to positions of influence and power, there's something wrong with said system: It seems to reward individual psychopathology, rather than humanism and cooperation.

Zbig was an intelligent guy for sure, and it's not easy to replace someone like him. But his teachings will cause trouble for another while - afaik, there is no effective counter-strategy yet, or is there? Can a government win against fundamentalist militants with limited violence, e.g. by isolating them and exposing their inhumane regime?

@jfl

I think you misunderstand something here. It's (afaics) absolutely not about a 'cabal of evil, demented individuals', almost on the contrary. But I like the picture of society as water surrounding a fish - or the air around us, which we don't see nor think about and take for granted.

His worst crime, with Carter, IMO, was trying successfully to manipulate the U.S.S.R. to invade Afghanistan. All of Carter's outrage over the invasion was a lot of baloney. They were not exactly being the friends of Afghanistan they pretended to be. This was worse then later arming the jihadists.

hopehely@36 - Then my condolences to Mika Brzezinska and family. Just as I offer my condolences to the two million Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese and the millions more in the Middle East and everywhere else we freedomized. And just to be clear, those deaths are on me, personally, as a U.S. citizen. Brzezinski was a cog in a broken machine, but it has always been my machine.

jfl@37 - Lobaczewski said human society, as an organization, had an intrinsic immune system. You don't need a 'cure' for psychopathy any more than you need a 'cure' for the billions of germs floating around you every day. That social immune system's proper function depended on unfettered communication. Humans are not inherently evil - they have a tendency to form healthy societies when they freely and openly communicate with each other. I like to think that's true.

Psychopaths are inherently opposed to that - all communications should be centralized, monitored, controlled, cleansed, recorded and subject to 'their' approval. Psychopaths must turn off society's immune system to rule over it and not be rejected. We're right in the middle of that struggle - right here, right now. Most people will willingly hand over their freedom of communication to state psychopaths because... TERRORISTS!

I don't know - maybe we need to evolve for another thousand years or so before most people finally 'get it'.

smuks@39 - "...I find the use of psychological & medicinal terminology in political contexts rather problematic - it usually doesn't enhance comprehension imo..."

Agree 100%. I cringe at using the word 'psychopathy' and I'm sure plenty of mental health professionals would love to punch me in the face for doing so. I blame Lobaczewski.

"...But his [Brzezinski] teachings will cause trouble for another while - afaik, there is no effective counter-strategy yet, or is there?

He remained unrepentant his whole life about organizing the Afghan Mujahideen/Taliban because... SOVIETS! He remained unrepentant for the atrocities in S.E. Asia because... CHICOMS! I can't seem to read anything by him without the world 'control' popping up - he was a control freak, as long as it was the U.S. that was in control of the rest of the planet's vassal states and assorted evil-doers. Sorry, I must have missed the part where God came down from the heavens and gave the U.S. the secret decoder ring and Helmet of Righteousness. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that justifies his imperialism. In fact, the old guys that founded the U.S. gave very specific warnings about exactly that kind of adventurism.

Instead of psychopathy I suggest you refer to the mental issues as dysregulation of neural networks. People who commit "crimes" against individuals and society are very hurt humans who learn from other hurt humans....usually their parents but if a product of bullying, then others as well.....and it seems to be feeding on itself like a growing infection.

And drugs are not the answer but neurofeedback may be if it is allowed to develop and be integrated into society as the go-to mental health tool.

As I have said repeatedly, the incentives of our society cause most of this by being based on competition and a centuries old hierarchy of families that own/control society through owning/controlling private money which all believe to be public.

The funny/ interesting thing is how this US/ western control over the rest of the world is habitually described by code expressions such as 'maintaining the international order' or 'stabilize global order'.
The US has been an expansionist country long before Zbig, cf. the Monroe Doctrine. Just as Britain and other European colonial powers before...

But more specifically, I really found myself wondering if any effective strategy exists to counter the deployment of jihadist militias against 'uncooperative' states. Other than overwhelming military force. China has been fairly successful, but at the price of a very virulent anti-Uyghur racism.

@Paveway
The funny/ interesting thing is how this US/ western control over the rest of the world is habitually described by code expressions such as 'maintaining the international order' or 'stabilize global order'.
...
Posted by: smuks | May 27, 2017 8:21:46 PM | 47

It's less complex/mysterious than it seems at first glance.
It's all about bullshit + bullying. Luxuriously-funded think/spin tanks make up the bullshit and feed it to people in the MSM capable of bullying (and diminishing the reputation of) persuasive critics of the bullshit.

My preferred classic example was the role of Thomas L Friedman in silencing critics of Bush II's Iraq War. TLF accused them of Moral Equivalence and the Jew-controlled media made sure that his bullying received superior publicity throughout the West.

It's easy to dismissively overlook the Jew-controlled media factor but the Jews, more than any other interest group, needed control over Western Media to suppress the criminality of the Israel Project and to whitewash it by flogging the Holocaust to death if anyone dared to mention Jews and Genocide in the same sentence. And the Media Acquisition program was well underway before WWII broke out.

Western politics could be disinfected overnight by naming, shaming and marginalising EVERY politician who professes sincere pride in being a Good Friend of the parasitic criminal enterprise known as Israel.
Fake sincerity should NOT be tolerated as a substitute for TRUTH.

JFK had back-channels to both the Soviet Union and Cuba. Why? He didn't trust the CIA.

Then he was shot.

Trump is in a very difficult place considering his relationship with the Deep State and the intelligence services. If he really wants to screw with the CIA before he meets his own destiny he should release all the JFK files that are still classified.

@ Bob in Portland who suggested Trump release the still classified JFK files to protect himself against the CIA

Have you been smoking some of that early Obama Hopium again?

Trump is a wannnabe to the upper crust of elite in the middle of a dust up between them and the newbies wanting to act like emperors.....and all is cover for more human suffering and repression except for the core acolytes of the God of Mammon

And the CIA is a tool of the God of Mammon religion that does what it is told.

@20 paveway.. i personally liked the psychopathy spin and found your comments bang on... thanks for articulating the main thing for me here - zigs passing is one misguided person who made life worse for a lot of people in his misguided belief.. there are a lot of folks on the planet like that! and indeed you address it with regard to countries like the usa too! thanks for all that.. may the light of wisdom enter into all of this at some point sooner then later..

"As National Security Advisor of U.S. President Jimmy Carter Brzezinski devised the strategy of using religiously motivated radical militants against secular governments and their people."

While I agree with you that he should "burn in hell" he hardly devised anything. With his background and cold war at the time, he was useful idiot for Americans and his masters. And there is plenty of them in each administration. Trump has one, some idiot from Hungary.

Ian Johnson mentioned in one of its clip a guy from Eisenhower's administration, "devoted catholics" (per IJ) who devised this strategy, and yet again that strategy simply was inherited from the Nazi who used it to fight Soviets.

By the way a society (if the US is such thing), or the US Gov. generate these murderers and apparently the new ones are in ample supply. That's the nature of system.

I have no love for ZBig, but it is far from clear he is an "architect" of the American Deep State.

There is really no such thing as "an American Deep State" which implies something hidden, that you can't see - there is only the American State which is all too visible. Most Americans believe in American Exceptionalism and the right of the United States to make the rest of the world as it wants so that it can pillage and exploit it to keep capitalism going.
I've read so-called liberals objecting to the Trump regime setting up secret secure channels to Moscow because it might prevent the "American government" from intercepting such communications. Which American government is this? The one with Trump as president? It no longer seems to exist because the "American government" is led by the true president of the United States, Hillary Clinton. There is nothing invisible about this because it's out in the open for anyone to see as always, the oligarchs, the MIC, the neo-cons, the liberal interventionists, ......

I'm not in the least bit clear on what your statement is concerning the difference between the American Deep State and the American Empire's foreign policy. In particular, perhaps you can explain how the Deep State is separate from American foreign policy.

@ToivoS #33

Not exactly. ZBig advocated partnering with China to slay Russia - because well, he's Polish. Kissinger advocated partnering with Russia to slay China, because he's German (Jew).
What is ironic is that both positions inherently acknowledge the end of the US as a hyperpower - it is far from clear the US Deep State accepts this (see: Shrillary).

@Ghostship #56

You might consider looking up what "deep" means. My understanding is that it refers to "extensive" - i.e. the sprawling organizations and personalities in the unelected portions of the US government and corresponding "players" in US society.
As for visibility: I can't say I agree with your statement. I see no indication that "most" Americans support spending more on foreign adventures than domestic improvement, as just one example.
To me, the American Deep State is the US' equivalent to the USSR's bureaucrats: members of government and society who have twisted the mechanisms of government for their own benefit - to the detriment of overall society.
This isn't anything new in the world scene particularly under the mantra of Absolute Power Corrupts.
The interesting wrinkle is the ongoing saga of the CCP Deep State: on the one hand, they've enriched themselves to an amazing degree. On the other hand, they've actually done an amazing job of building China up from 6% of the US' GDP in 1984 to parity or greater today.
My own view is that "people" wherever they are don't give a crap about leaders becoming rich so long as their lives improve too.
What pisses them off is when these leaders get rich but their lives get worse.

The Poles are real soreheads about Russia and to let one of them be an architect of American foreign policy was a boneheaded move, the man operated according to a deeply held personal animus towards Russia and letting him serve in such a pivotal capacity was a big mistake. In general, letting foreigners fill important policy making roles should be prohibited; they carry too much baggage.

For the record, good riddance to ZB, who was no more than a dark stain on most of the humanity. Maybe he'll come back as a poisonous snake...
@7
You're right in some ways. Zia-ul-Haq originated the idea of drawing Russians in. Also, the Brits used Muslim Brotherhood against Egypt's Nasser (except, they then killed the US-preferred Sadat). So much for blowback...
@12
I'd be curious about Carter, too. Never heard him address it. He signed the directive to entice Russians into Afg. in July '79 - and then feigned HUGE surprise on TV when they marched in (and BTW, they were invited by the then-Afg. govt.; it was not really an invasion). (It was stupid of them, of course.)
On deep state - it first manifested itself in the open when JFK was assassinated - preceding ZB. But he became a visible part of it, no question.
There is something wrong with the way humans manage power.

@61 Most Poles I know are still having nightmares about Stalin. Second generation Eastern European immigrants to North America are lucky if they don't get brainwashed. Their parents are still fighting WW2. It's all down to unfortunate geography I guess.

Brzezinski was an obsessive Russia-hater from the beginning to the end. That led to the monumental failures of Carter’s term in office; the hatreds Brzezinski released had an impact which continues to be catastrophic for the rest of the world.

To Brzezinski also goes the credit for projecting Iran on to its nuclear-armed path against the Great Satan and US allies in the Middle East, making the sunni-shia sectarian division into a cause of international war which it was not, before Brzezinski began. That it was not is due to the power of the secular Arab leaders to sustain an alternative to religion for governance. Brzezinski’s idea was to target them as Kremlin stooges and overthrow them. To Brzezinski also goes the credit for releasing Israeli ambition under Menachem Begin and his successors on the Israeli right; the promotion of Egyptian corruption and weakness under Anwar Sadat and his successors; and the destruction of the Palestinians.
...

Has it ever occurred to anyone that well educated people have the resources to perceive and prevent such provocateurs as Brzezinski and even Kissinger from enacting their agendas? Just the written history of Europeans is about three millennia and presented to some lesser or greater extent in the education of the public. Compare that with duhmerican education that hardly covers much past the civil war between the states, the founding has long been enveloped in the mists of sacred mythology. Look long and hard at what a duhmerican imbecile wrote on an adjacent post for a prime example of not-history in the making, a benighted soul not having a past, any place in the present and not the slightest idea of where they want to be in the future. But, by Dog, they have a sacred opinion that cannot be transgressed by any mortal. There are certainly more of that kind than there are of those who study, or even just read, history; these ignorant citizens are what allow the existence of the present state and state of affairs, and allow intelligence and excellence to be overwhelmed by a tsunami of their beliefs. What a clarion call for excellence should be raised, but isn't. Their world is circling the sewer and will take all others with it. Maybe that is the best answer, and not worry about the moral cripples that enter into the public domain and are masters of a ship of fools.

At first glance, as described by most political analysts, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan remains a deeply puzzling event.

"Most importantly, the external threat to Afghanistan was much exaggerated by the Soviets to justify their action. Prior to the invasion, the mujahidin was weak, divided, and in no position to seize control of the country, let alone expand its activities to the Soviet Central Asian republics. The suggestion that Amin was on the verge of reorienting his country towards the West is also found to be without foundation.

The action is also shown to have possessed little immediately understandable logic in the context of Moscow's dealings with the Afghan regime, while simultaneously presenting several predictable costs to both the Soviet Union's international standing and domestic affairs. Even more interesting is the finding from archival research that earlier in 1979 the CPSU Politburo had, in no uncertain terms, dismissed the option of a major deployment of Soviet troops to Afghanistan, having shown themselves to be very much alive to the high risks involved. There can be little doubt therefore that the Soviet decision to launch the invasion must be considered an extraordinary undertaking and an event meriting close study.

Since the Second World War, Soviet economic penetration of Afghanistan had grown steadily. Moscow had taken the leading role in developing the country's physical infrastructure, building up its mining industry, gas pipelines, airfields, and road network, including the Salang Tunnel through the Hindu Kush, which served as the main artery connecting Afghanistan to the Soviet Union. In total, the Soviets had already completed 71 separate projects in Afghanistan by April 1978 and another 60 had been agreed upon; Soviet-Afghan trade had come to account for 70–80 percent of the Afghan total. As Milan Hauner summarizes: “Taken together, the Soviet aid program was a carefully calibrated Soviet economic penetration of a neighboring country: long before they sent a single soldier across the Afghan border, the Soviet presence in the country was already overpowering”.

Had the Soviet Union proceeded more cautiously and not subverted what had been a highly favorable situation for them, Moscow would almost certainly have retained a leading role in Afghanistan and, via its economic and personnel investments, continued to have exerted considerable influence over any regime in Kabul.

However, instead of proceeding with its established policy of gradual integration and prudent maintenance of good relations with all Kabul regimes, Moscow adopted a bold and incredibly costly change in strategy, risking all of their slowly accumulated gains for an ally of seemingly little value. To look at it another way, having carefully consumed a sizeable piece of the Afghan cake, the Soviets attempted to gulp down the rest in a single, overzealous bite."

Why, then, would the Soviets proceed in such a reckless manner?

Yuriy Andropov, head of the New Kremlin:

Would our forces really help them here? In this case, tanks and armored vehicles cannot be of assistance. I think that we should say directly to Comrade Taraki that we support all of their actions and will render the help which we have agreed today and yesterday, but in no way can we move to an introduction of forces to Afghanistan. […] To bring in troops, this means to fight against the people, to suppress the people, to shoot the people. We will look like aggressors, and we cannot allow this (Ob obostrenii, Bukovsky Archive, March 17–19, 1979, p. 16, p. 24).

"On the basis of the factors discussed above, the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan seems bewildering. In addition to being atypical of Moscow's established Third World policy and offering few apparent benefits and several obvious costs, the deployment of troops has been shown to have been firmly and repeatedly opposed by the Politburo just a matter of months earlier. One is therefore left to ponder, what could possibly have induced the Soviet leaders to perform so rapid a volte-face?"

The answer to this question, then, makes it possible to understand what is going on in the Middle East today.

Literature may hold some answers to your questions. Khaled Hosseini wrote The Kite Runner of growing up in Kabul at that time. You use the term 'Soviet invasion' throughout your comment as if western propaganda was the correct history of what transpired; it isn't. If you framed your observations around 'the sitting Afghanistan government's invitation …', squaring the circle, as you are trying to do, becomes much easier but western propaganda quickly falls apart. There may be an interview with the author in the Sunday Times Book section from the time when the book came out where he talks of that history directly and unambiguously. Look at wikipedia Afghanistan History, sections 2.4 and 2.5 to get an idea how complicated that era was (and care for excessive salt intake from wiki's telling as well). Just before Peter Frankopan The Silk Roads falls apart from western propaganda, it covers quite well the play of interests throughout the southwest Asian region and became focused particularly on Afghanistan and Iranian regimes, Afghanistan as doorway to British Indian interests and Iran (Persia) for petroleum concessions (later to include exploitable Iraqi resources as well). Almost all of this is hidden from public exposure and use in determining foreign policies for those countries. Between those resources a rational understanding may be reached of the region's actual history.

Besides the obvious reasons, by unlocking the oil and gas of Central Asia, and by sending it to India, the Americans would ensure that Central Asia would no longer being dependent on Russia, Iran and China. The best thing was that the Communist dictators of the new countries wanted exactly the same thing, even though they were afraid of Russia and Iran.

Russia and Iran are competing with these countries in the oil and gas markets, and China has almost monopsony power over them and can get their oil and gas at lower than normal prices, since they Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have no real alternatives.

Iran and Russia block Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan when they try to send their oil and gas to Europe through Turkey. Especially they block Turkmenistan and Kazakstan by not permitting the under-water Trans-Caspian Pipeline, which would connect Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. From the south the Islamist militants who are supported by Iran and the Arabs of the Gulf are blocking in Afghanistan the countries of Central Asia from reaching India.

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognized their government. The Americans were asking from the Taliban to allow the construction of the pipelines, and in return the Americans were willing to recognize their government.

ran, together with the Arabs of the Gulf, was trying to sabotage the negotiations, but at the same time Iran was almost at war with the Taliban, due to their close relationship with Pakistan and the Arabs of the Persian Gulf. The Taliban had ignored the Islamists of Afghanistan who were supported by the Iranians, mainly the Shias of Afghanistan, who are 20% of the population, and who had formed an alliance with some Tajics and Uzbeks of Northern Afghanistan, the so called Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance was also supported by Russia and India, while the Taliban were supported by Pakistan and the Arabs of the Persian Gulf.

While the Americans were negotiating with the Talibans, Al Qaeda, an ally of the Taliban, was trying to sabotage their negotiations. Al Qaeda was providing financial and military assistance to the Taliban, and in 1998 Al Qaeda attacked the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Two hundred people lost their lives, and another four thousands were injured.

From that moment the negotiations between the Americans and the Taliban took another turn, and the Bill Clinton administration started pushing the Taliban to hand them Osama bin Laden, and to denounce Al Qaeda. But that was very difficult given that Al Qaeda was supporting financially and militarily the Taliban.

The fact is that the attacks on the American embassies had exactly the result that Al Qaeda wanted, which was to undermine the negotiations between United States and various Taliban factions. At the same time due to the Arab money the corrupt Taliban leaderships were not willing to allow the construction of the pipelines, which would be good for all the countries, except of course for Iran and the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf.

I have abhorred him from what I had heard about him and his policies and I am sympathetic with much of what has been printed on this thread but I like to believe that I am open to counterarguments and other opinions. I really don't know for sure much of what I read and I am cognizant of the fact that I am probably as susceptible to disinformation as anyone.

So I offer this as another perspective/viewpoint without any judgements: